E. Scott Lloyd has been named Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the office at the Department of Health and Human Services tasked with assisting refugees resettle in the United States. Mr. Lloyd's background includes government service, work in the private sector, and a strong devotion to conservative Christian causes.Scott Lloyd, Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Mr. Lloyd got his start helping his law school professor represent the parents of Terri Schiavo, a woman in a persistent vegetative state. The case pitted Ms. Schiavo's husband and legal guardian against Ms. Schiavo's parents:

Schiavo's husband argued that Schiavo would not have wanted prolonged artificial life support without the prospect of recovery, and elected to remove her feeding tube. Schiavo's parents argued in favor of continuing artificial nutrition and hydration and challenged Schiavo's medical diagnosis. The highly publicized and prolonged series of legal challenges presented by her parents caused a seven-year delay before Schiavo's feeding tube was ultimately removed [in 2005, leading to her death].

Mr. Lloyd built on this experience by assisting Americans United for Life (the self-described "legal architect of the pro-life movement") to develop a policy on end-of-life issues. He also helped a Congressional Subcommittee prepare for a hearing and issue a report on the "chemical abortion drug" RU-486.
In 2010, Mr. Lloyd co-founded a law firm called Legal Works Apostolate, "a full-service law firm providing effective representation and counsel, informed by the particular concerns of families and institutions that must navigate the 'thickets of the law' while remaining faithful to Church teaching." All of the firm's attorneys and staff "undertake or persist only in work that is consistent with our deep and abiding concern for the right to life and the sacramental nature of marriage."
Immediately prior to his job at ORR, Mr. Lloyd was employed by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal and charitable organization, where he focused on assisting Christian refugees and other religious minorities persecuted by ISIS. As an organization, the KoC has expressed pro-immigrant views. For example, in 2006 (before Mr. Lloyd's time), the KoC called upon “the President and the U.S. Congress to agree upon immigration legislation that not only gains control over the process of immigration, but also rejects any effort to criminalize those who provide humanitarian assistance to illegal immigrants, and provides these immigrants an avenue by which they can emerge from the shadows of society and seek legal residency and citizenship in the U.S.” The organization has also been politically active, particularly in campaigns across the U.S. against gay marriage.
In addition to his day jobs, Mr. Lloyd has been an active volunteer in the pro-life movement. He is on the Board of Directors of the Front Royal Pregnancy Center, an organization that provides "counseling" related to unwanted pregnancies. He is also a founder of Witness Works, which aims to build a "culture of life." In addition, he contributes to various pro-life publications, including Human Life International ("Contraception: The root of the Culture of Death") and Veritatis Splendor, where he writes, "The Supreme Court, when it claimed to recognize for women the 'right' to abortion on demand, simultaneously stripped the fathers of these children of their right to be parents, and other associated rights" and "LifeSiteNews provides this nice criticism exposing the logical bankruptcy of [Maryland] Governor O'Malley's support for so-called ‘gay marriage.’" In another article, Mr. Lloyd references the “radical secularists” who opposed the display of a cross on government land. He also has a piece in the National Catholic Register, where he bemoans the high failure rate of contraception and opposes taxpayer-funding for birth control. Mr. Lloyd writes, "I suggest that the American people make a deal with women: So long as you are using the condom, pill or patch I [the taxpayer] am providing with my money, you are going to promise not to have an abortion if the contraception fails, which it often does. You will put the baby up for adoption if you don’t want him or her."
So what we have in Mr. Lloyd is a man who has devoted himself to the pro-life cause, who seems to oppose "so-called" gay marriage and "radical secularists," and who has worked to help Christian and other minority-religion refugees (as opposed to Muslim refugees) in the Middle East. Whether any of this is relevant to his new position as Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, I do not know. But I can't help but feel concerned that Mr. Lloyd's narrow focus on "Christian issues" leaves some doubt about his commitment to the wide and diverse group of refugees and resettlement agencies he is now expected to serve.
More troubling than Mr. Lloyd's experience, though, is his lack of experience. It seems he graduated from law school in 2007, and then worked for most of his career on pro-life issues. He formed the Legal Works Apostolate law firm in 2010 and then sometime thereafter he worked for the Knights of Columbus on Christian refugee issues (as best as I can tell, Mr. Lloyd was working on contraception issues with the KoC by early 2012). Indeed, Mr. Lloyd's sparse government profile provides no dates, so it is unclear how much experience he actually has. And with regards to his time at KoC, we're told only that he "served as an attorney in the Public Policy office." It's not even clear that his primary duties at KoC involved refugees.
All this begs the question, how is Mr. Lloyd qualified to direct the Office of Refugee Resettlement? What experience has he actually had with refugees? Or with running a large organization that has an annual budget in excess of $1.5 billion (though presumably the budget will be cut significantly under President Trump)?
Also, in a properly-functioning democracy, one would hope that appointed government experts would have the knowledge and the courage to speak truth to power. Does Mr. Lloyd have the breadth and depth of experience necessary to advocate for refugees? Will he stand up to Trump Administration officials who falsely characterize refugees as terrorists and criminals? Will he be able (and willing) to stand up for Muslim refugees, and dispute the many false stories vilifying them? And what about LGBT refugees? Given his history opposing gay rights, will he treat LGBT refugees with the respect and compassion that they need and deserve?
Perhaps I am too skeptical of Mr. Lloyd. He clearly has demonstrated compassion for certain vulnerable populations, and that compassion may very well extend beyond his prior areas of interest. His challenge will be to expand that circle of compassion to include people who he has not previously served. Christian teaching commands "love your enemy." And Proverbs states, "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink." And of course, the Torah reminds us again and again to welcome the stranger. If Mr. Lloyd takes these admonitions seriously, he may well prove my skepticism wrong. I certainly hope so.

There is only one state in the Union without a refugee resettlement program--Wyoming. Late last year, the state’s Republican governor, Matt Mead, took some tepid steps toward establishing a public-private partnership to help resettle refugees in the Equality State. Predictably, those efforts were met by fierce resistance, both from inside and outside the state.

WyoMing the Merciless.

First, a bit of background. The United States accepts more refugees for permanent resettlement than any other country (though many countries temporarily host significantly more refugees than we do). In FY 2012, we accepted 58,238 refugees for resettlement. These refugees came from Bhutan, Burma, Iraq, Somalia and many other countries. With the help of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and various NGOs, the refugees were resettled in 49 states plus the District of Columbia. Some states took many (California: 5,173; Texas: 5,923) and other states took few (Montana and Hawaii: 1 each; Mississippi: 8; Arkansas: 10). Only Wyoming took none.

A former refugee, and now a Wyoming resident and high school math teacher, Bertine Bahige, began a campaign to change the situation and encourage Wyoming to join the rest of the country and establish a refugee resettlement program. As a result of his efforts, in September 2013, the Governor made some preliminary inquiries with HHS about establishing a resettlement program.

But once word got out that Wyoming was considering thinking about possibly creating a resettlement program, hundreds of people called the Governor's office to express opposition to the plan. In response, a spokesman for the Governor issued a statement, "Wyoming is not setting up a refugee camp.... This is still very preliminary.”

Since its tepid beginnings, the Governor's inquiry has made zero progress. In its most recent statement, the Governor's office backed away from any resettlement plan:

"Constituents asked the governor to look into the possibility of a program, and he did that," [said a spokesperson. Governor] Mead believes any effort to establish a program must be led by community interest. But... "no interested group has offered a recommendation to establish a program to date."

Of course, the fact that there is no program and there has been no progress in creating a program has done little to assuage the anger of the anti-refugee faction. Last week, a (seemingly small) group called Citizens Protecting Wyoming, held a rally at the state capitol where they expressed their fear that refugees would bring Ebola to Wyoming, take cash from the government, and drain the state of resources.

The key note speaker at the rally was Don Barnett, a fellow at the Washington, DC-based Center for Immigration Studies ("CIS"). In a bit of a non-sequitur, Mr. Barnett claims to have "gained his expertise in immigration and refugee policy during an assignment in the U.S.S.R. while employed with the U.S.I.A. [United States Information Agency]." His organization, CIS, generally favors reduced immigration, and advocates (not always intellectually honestly) to restrict asylum and refugee admissions. Mr. Barnett’s main concern seems to be that the federal government pays charities to help resettle refugees, and he wants to bring this information "out of the shadows." (I suppose he is less concerned about the private prisons that make Bank by detaining tens of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants each day). Mr. Barnett is also concerned with fraud in the refugee system. Of course, fraud and costs are legitimate concerns, but so is protecting refugees, and to me, Mr. Barnett’s throw-the-refugee-baby-out-with-the-bathwater approach mischaracterizes and unfairly distorts the life-saving work of the religious charities.

In connection with the rally, Citizens Protecting Wyoming issued a press release, noting that, "The people of Wyoming are caring and generous... Yet that does not mean we are OK with being forced to increase the burden to our health, safety, welfare, medical, community and educational programs via our tax dollars." Hmm, isn't giving assistance to people who legitimately need it the very definition of caring and generous? You’d think they could at least be honest about who they are. How about this for their next press release:

While the citizens of Wyoming are generally caring and generous, we here at “Citizens Protecting Wyoming” couldn’t give a damn about disease-carrying, welfare-grubbing foreigners, who probably left their countries just to steal from the American tax payer. And even though the rest of the country does its share to support refugee resettlement, which is an important component of American foreign policy, we’ll let others carry this burden for us. Wyoming is the “Equality State,” and to us, that means we get equal benefits, but we shirk equal responsibility.

I take some comfort from the fact that there was a substantial counter-protest by people who support expanding the refugee resettlement program to Wyoming. In some ways, though, this is all a tempest in a tea pot. I doubt Wyoming would ever accept more than a handful of refugees (although it is a large state, it has a small population), and so in practical terms it wouldn’t mean much one way or the other. However, in symbolic terms, I think it is important. The United States has committed to protect a certain number of refugees each year. This commitment reflects our values as a nation and our position as the leader of the Free World. In fulfilling our commitment, it would be nice to see all 50 states doing their share. So come on Wyoming, we’re all waiting for you to join us. I think you will be glad you did.